Sign Up For Email Updates

Price Statement on Safeguarding our Elections

SHARE:

June 16, 2016

A generation after Watergate and the Civil Rights movement, our election system is under attack. Billions of dollars in outside money has flooded into political campaigns with minimal oversight and transparency since the Citizens United decision in 2010. At the same time, Republicans in Congress, the North Carolina General Assembly, and state legislatures nationwide have systematically weakened or repealed hard-fought voting rights protections for minorities.

I strongly believe that we must fight back. Reversing the damage done by Citizens United and related decisions will ultimately require a constitutional amendment or a more favorable Supreme Court. But we must take action in the near term to ensure the integrity of our elections.

I am the lead House co-sponsor of comprehensive campaign reform legislation, the We the People Act, that would limit the outsize influence of SuperPACs, introduce new transparency in campaign finance, and overhaul the Federal Election Commission to ensure that it can effectively provide oversight to our elections. I have also championed modernizing federal public financing, which I consider to be a vital post-Watergate reform.

Our election system will never work effectively unless all eligible Americans are able to exercise their right to vote. I am committed to reinstating critical provisions of the Voting Rights Act that precent race-based voter discrimination. I also strongly support repeal of North Carolina's shameful new Voter ID law, which aims to disenfranchise minority voters to give Republicans an electoral advantage.

The time has come to take back our elections. I will be fighting hard to limit the influence of outside campaign spending and to guarantee that every American has the right to vote.